The production of urban space by mass media storytelling practices: Nowa Huta as a case study.

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1 Łukasz Stanek Technical University Delft, Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architectural Theory The production of urban space by mass media storytelling practices: Nowa Huta as a case study. The paper examines the printed mass media representations of Nowa Huta, a city in Poland, in the last fifteen years and investigates the instrumental roles these representations play in the practices of production of space in this city. 1 The research method developed in this investigation is based on the theory of the production of space by Henri Lefebvre. According to Lefebvre, space is produced by three types of practice: spatial practices of physical transformation of the environment, practices of representation of space and everyday practices of appropriation of space. The first practice produces spaces as perceived, the second produces representations of space which allow space to be conceived, and the third transforms space into what is called representational spaces, i.e. space considered as lived. 2 Lefebvre s characteristic of representations of space as institutionalized conceptualizations of space produced by intellectual practices applies fully to mass media representations of space 3 thus justifying the choice of Lefebvre s theory as the basis for the envisaged investigation. 1 The initial version of this article was written under the supervision of Ewa Kuryłowicz (Technical University Warsaw). My understanding of Henri Lefebvre s theory of production of space, applied in this article, is based on a research fellowship at the ETH Zurich supervised by Ákos Moravánszky and intensively consulted with Christian Schmid. I am grateful to Brent Batstra (TU Delft), Christine Boyer (Princeton University), Arie Graafland (TU Delft) and Patrick Healy (TU Delft) for their careful readings and comments. 2 Comp. the interpretation of Lefebvre s theory of production of space in: Stanek: To representations of space (referred to also as to mental space ) Lefebvre counts representations produced by planners and urbanists [ps:38] as well as philosophical [comp. ps:1-7] and scientific [ps:107,8] theories on space. Lefebvre stresses the danger of the reductionist [comp. ps:38] and ideological [ps:44] application of representations of space and their dependency on the social and economical relations [ps:3]. Representations of space are institutional since they are tied to the relations of production and to the order which those relations impose [ps:33]. They are systematic, since they subordinate the relations between objects and people in represented space to a logic [ps:41] and thus need to be consistent, although their consistency may be challenged [ibid.]. 1

2 Lefebvre s theory is particularly useful for the following investigation, since this theory provides a conceptual framework for linking an empirical examination of a carefully delineated practice that of mass media representation of space to other practices of production of space. The understanding of this linkage, however, requires a theoretical concept of the relationship between different practices of production of space. Lefebvre gives only a sketchy description of this relationship which he calls dialectical but at the same time distinguishes it from the classical dialectics of Hegel and Marx. Most of Lefebvre s interpreters try to explain this relationship by a reconstruction of the principles of Lefebvre s dialectics, but these attempts are neither philosophically convincing nor applicable to urban reality. 4 Instead of speculating on the principles of dialectics, the proposed paper suggests an alternative approach, based on the concept of practice, which is fundamental for Lefebvre s philosophy. According to this perspective, products of a particular practice of production of space are used as tools by other practices of production of space. In the case discussed in this paper, the representations of space produced by the printed mass media gain various instrumental roles in other practices of representing space as well as in practices of physical transformation of space and in the quotidian practices of appropriation of spaces. Thus, after delineating and characterizing different mass media representations of Nowa Huta between 1989 and 2004 in the first and second part of the paper, the third part examines the instrumental roles of these representations in other practices of production of space in this city. The paper is neither a didactic demonstration nor a secure application of the suggested interpretation of Lefebvre s theory, which provides a general framework for collecting and examining data; this framework allows revealing dependencies between various aspects of the urban reality which were unnoticed or unexplained in available analyses of Nowa Huta. At the same time, the discovery of these dependencies might be seen as an argument in favor of the proposed interpretation of Lefebvre s theory, showing its productivity for urban analysis. 4 Comp. Soja [1989], Dimendberg [1998], Shields [1999], Schmid [2003], Elden [2004]; for a discussion on these interpretations, comp. Stanek [2004]. Soja s contribution in [1996] is a development (or modification) of Lefebvre s theory rather than an interpretation. 2

3 1. The first socialist city in Poland : the representations of Nowa Huta during communism. Nowa Huta was founded in 1949 by the communist regime as the first socialist city in Poland. Located 10 km from Kraków, the Polish historical capital, as an independent industrial city for the workers of the future steelworks, 5 Nowa Huta became a district of Kraków already in The decision to construct a new city was followed by a massive propaganda campaign held in the state-controlled and censored mass media. The reasons of the localization of the city are still controversial, but nowadays most historians agree, that they were both economical and political (aiming at a change of the social structure of the conservative city of Kraków). 7 First houses were built already in 1949 and the steelworks were officially opened as the Lenin steelworks (or HIL) in During the postwar years many young people, mostly of rural origin, came from the whole country to Nowa Huta attracted by the possibility of a professional training, work and accommodation. The urban plan of the city is based on the concept of neighborhood units, which was state-of-the-arts in the 1940s theory of urban design. 8 The socialist realism as the architectural style of Nowa Huta was already in the 1960-s abandoned for an impoverished version of modernism. 9 The city witnessed much political unrest and the 1980-s Nowa Huta was one of the most important centers of anticommunist opposition in Poland. After the political transition in the year 1989, the steelworks (named since 1990 the Sendzimir steelworks, or HTS) faced serious economical problems, and the district came to be associated with criminality and unemployment. Since the official statistics do not support this association, 10 sociologists diagnose a striking difference between [the statistics] and the consciousness of the inhabitants [03.03] and the social mechanism called the 5 The name of the city Nowa Huta means in Polish new steelworks. 6 After the administrative reform in 1991, Nowa Huta was divided into five smaller districts (XIV, XV, XVI, XVII and XVIII). Within Kraków, Nowa Huta remained a unique and specific place, and therefore I refer to it in this paper as to a city. 7 Comp. Salwiński:1999, This was stressed by Stanisław Juchnowicz, one of the designers of Nowa Huta, in an interview with the author in March 2005 in Kraków. 9 For a discussion on the urbanistic concept of Nowa Huta, comp. Juchnowicz:2002 or Irion, Sieverts: Comp. articles listed at the end of this paper as: 03.03; 04.04;

4 self-fulfilling prophecy of social crisis [Bukowski:2003]. The following investigation will show that both the structure and the content of mass media representations of Nowa Huta contributed to this mechanism. It is impossible to understand the mass media representations of Nowa Huta after 1989 without taking into consideration the representations of the city during the communist period. They were already given attention by scholars, 11 who, however, rarely go beyond a mere catalogue of representations. In this section, I would like to concentrate on three issues, which determined the mass media representations of the city after the political change: the relationship between the represented and the representation, the logic of oppositions as caused by the political and institutional conditions of public life in the communist Poland, and the thematic fields addressed in the mass media representations, most importantly the representation of Nowa Huta as a socialist city. The role played in the development of Nowa Huta by its mass media representations can be best grasped by focusing on the fact that the city was posterior to the emergence of its mass media representations. The first representations of Nowa Huta appeared in the mass media before the construction of the city even began. Nowa Huta was literally set up according to one media story, which was powerful enough to move the people to come voluntarily (in most cases), contribute to the construction and pledge their future to the city. It is not difficult to delineate this single story, since it was omnipresent in the state controlled press in the late 1940-s and early 1950-s, and which later, by ritualistic repetition, achieved the status of a foundation myth. It is a private history which following the canon of private histories from the Stalinist era is both personal and universal, intimate but shared by everybody. The climax of the foundation myth is a picture of a young person who comes to Nowa Huta attracted by the mass media reports on the first socialist city and finds nothing but mud. This story introduces already the problematic of representation and its most important issues which will reappear in all subsequent 11 The first theoretical contribution was given by Renata Siemieńska [1969, 44 68]. An interesting attempt to evaluate the credibility of mass media representations from the first years of Nowa Huta by comparing them with the reports of the secret police may be found in the article by Maria Christian [1999]; comp. also [Stenning:2001]. 4

5 stories on the city: the mass media as the carrier of the representations of space, the influence of these representations on people (the seductive media image as transformed into a mental one) and their self-referentiality (since the foundation myth was the very first story on Nowa Huta, the story referred to in the foundation myth as read by the newcomer could be nothing else than the foundation myth itself). The story dramatically addresses the issue of the relationship between the represented and representation, in its exemplary showing as a distance between the splendid media image of the city and the mud on the building site; precisely this distance is the locus of emotions in Nowa Huta: hope, nostalgia, dissatisfaction, resignation or anger. This type of report, showing Nowa Huta as an ongoing realization of a project which is a representation of the future city and a conditional legitimization of its present state will constantly reappear in the subsequent mass media reports on the city. 12 Besides the articles resembling a sporting report displaying the city as catching up with its own representation, two other types of the relationship between the represented and the representation can be traced in the mass media between 1949 and A widespread way of writing about Nowa Huta is demythologization: the popular representations are criticized and rejected as myths based on wishful thinking, propaganda or superficial observation. Instead, the examination of the real city is recommended in order to discover its essence, to be displayed in a new representation. 13 The third way of writing about Nowa Huta completely reverses the two above described approaches. Nowa Huta is claimed to be a symbol, which means, that the city is not the represented but it is the representation itself. This symbolism was based on a metonymy: the social promotion of workers in the city symbolized the new role of the proletariat in the whole country; the steelworks symbolized the industrialization of Poland For example Gorczyński [1977] in the article An urban utopia or reality? writes that Nowa Huta does not exist yet and asks whether it is becoming a socialist city. 13 The articles titles speak for themselves: We don t know Nowa Huta [Steinhauf:1969], Myths and reality [Czarski:1975], Truth and legend about Nowa Huta [Roszko:1976]. 14 Comp. for example Ślusarski:1984 or 89.10; 5

6 This brief analysis of the relationships between the representation and represented which were implied by mass media representations of the city reveals the complexity of the master representation of Nowa Huta: that of a socialist city. A socialist city may be understood as the project of the city, which is supposed be achieved in the future, the essence of the city which may be discovered by means of demythologization, and the city itself as a symbol for the political, economical and social development of the country. 15 However, what can be analytically discovered as a set of distinctive relationships was blurred in the mass media practices of representation. This blurring was not accidental on the contrary, it was a functionalized blurring. It was used by the regime as a rhetorical tool in order to reject every critique of the city as partial biased - since referring only to the part of the city and not to the city as a whole. 16 The functionalization of blurring of the representation of Nowa Huta is one of the consequences of the politicization of the discourse on the city stemming from the definition of Nowa Huta in political terms, namely as a socialist city. The consequences were, however, more far-reaching. Since in communist Poland a free political discussion was forbidden, the only way of linguistic engagement for those deterred from producing signifiers was to create a spectacular exemption to the official discourse on the level of the signified. Thus, the only possibility to deny the official representations of Nowa Huta, was to execute subversive actions in the public space which negated these representations. The representations of Nowa Huta as the socialist city were militantly rejected by the inhabitants in a series of riots, strikes, manifestations 17 and in mass participation in religious events For the spatial and social characteristics of socialist city comp. for example French [etc.] [1979] or Andrusz [etc.] [1996]. 16 For example, the critique of the not satisfying present state of the city was dismissed by the official media as not taking into consideration the fact that the city was a project in development; on the other hand, the critique of the project as being utopian was rejected by pointing at the present state of the city in order to show that a lot of the project had been already realized. 17 The first violent demonstration against the authorities took place in 1960 when the government withdrew the construction permit for the first church in the city. This event is known as the defense of the cross. The openly political strikes were organized later than in the rest of the country. The most important strikes and riots in Nowa Huta took place in the 1980-s and made the city known as one of the most important center of anticommunist opposition in the country. 6

7 Thus, since the only way to address the representations of Nowa Huta was to accept or to deny them, the representations were forced to follow the logic of oppositions. From the beginning of the city, Nowa Huta, the socialisty city, was defined as proletarian, atheist, young, healthy, strong, wealthy, modern, green, spatial in opposition to Kraków, which was supposed to be bourgeois, reactionary, clerical, old, degenerated, weak, impoverished, old-fashioned, stony, cramped. Some other opposing representations emerged out of the social reality in the city (most importantly, the opposition between a proletarian, industrial city and a big village 19 ). Even representations which were loosely connected to the master image of the socialist city (for example: Nowa Huta as the city of greenery ) were also caught into the logic of oppositions (since the 1970-s the slogan of a green city was contested by the diagnosis of the ecological catastrophe caused by the steelworks). 20 The last two oppositions were presented in the public mass media and thus the contradictions expressed by them must have been addressed in the official discourse. The schemes applied in order to tame these contradictions were that of a temporal transition (from peasants to workers) or that of Marxist dialectics, following 18 Most important were the two visits to Nowa Huta of the pope John Paul II (the former archbishop of Kraków) in the years 1979 and In his 1979 sermon the pope directly addressed the official representation of Nowa Huta as a city of working people, but rejected its equation with socialist and thus atheist, saying: the contemporary problematic of the human work [ ] is based [ ] on one fundamental category: this is the category of dignity of work and thus that of the dignity of man. [ ] This fundamental category [ ] is a Christian category [Wojtyła:1979]. 19 In 1979 as much as 74% of the residents of Nowa Huta were of rural origin and the transition from the rural into urban communities (in habits, value systems, ways of arranging the flat etc.) was one of the main topics of sociological investigations of Nowa Huta in the 1950-s and 60-s [comp. Siemieńska:1969; Pieczonkowa:1970; Bukowski:2003]. At the same the city was undeniably an industrial city with the steelworks being the most important employer (in the 1980-s 80% of the people were employed by the steelworks and cooperating companies) and organizer of social infrastructure; the rhythm of the four-shift work in the factory regulated the life of the whole city [99.14; 99.28; comp. Karsznia:1997; Bukowski:2003]. The two representations were confronted as early as in the late 1950-s, when the mass media presented Nowa Huta as a city of rural people, who were torn from their traditional environments and value systems, and became completely deprived of moral and social attitudes; the first shocking contribution to this theme was Adam Ważyk s Poem for Adults [comp. Ważyk:1956]. 20 Comp. Forowicz:1983; Przekrój:1984;

8 which the contradiction between city and countryside were presented as being overcame by a new emerging rural-urban socialist society [comp. Wereksiej:1976]. This net of opposing representations dominated by the master image of the socialist city and the complex relationships between the representation and the represented shaped the representations of Nowa Huta after 1989, when the former subversive representations gained access to the public mass media. 2. The contested city: representations of Nowa Huta in the local mass media after The most important change in the discourse on Nowa Huta after 1989 is its pluralisation. The official discourse was not simply replaced by the former subversive one (what was the case with many discourses on other controversial themes in Poland after 1989). A new, spatial split emerged (running across the political one): between the local, or interior discourse, supported by Nowa Huta s local media and the exterior discourse, present mainly in the Kraków s local press and the majority of the national press. The two were joined by professional discourses (architectural, sociological, historical, geographical) which permeated into the mass media and by discourses tied to particular institutions (the steelworks and the district authorities, but also various cultural centers and organizations, like some organizations of tenants). Active roles in the discussion on Nowa Huta play also some individuals, who take recognizable positions thus setting the framework for the whole discussion on the city. 21 The following investigation of the mass media representations of Nowa Huta after 1989 is focused on the local press, which in comparison to national media is more sensitive in the registration of changes, faster in reactions and supporting a permanent discussion on the local issues. A particular attention has been given to 21 To the most active participants of the public discussion on Nowa Huta belong: Stanisław Juchnowicz (a member of the Tadeusz Ptaszycki team of the designers of Nowa Huta and professor at the Technical Univeristy Kraków), Maciej Miezian (the director of Nowa Huta Musem), Jan Franczyk (the editor-in-chief of the local weekly Głos Tygodnik Nowohucki ), Mieczysław Gil (one of the leaders of the anticommunist opposition in Nowa Huta), Niward Karsznia (the rector of one of the parishes in Nowa Huta). 8

9 the weekly magazine of Nowa Huta: Głos Nowej Huty (name changed in 1991 to Głos Tygodnik Nowohucki ), established in All issues between 1988 and 2003 of this magazine have been reviewed, thus allowing to make quantitative comparisons (comp. the diagram attached to this paper). Other sources were the Kraków dailies: Gazeta Krakowska and Dziennik Polski (both existed during the communism) and dailies which were set up after 1989: Czas Krakowski and Gazeta w Krakowie (the Krakow edition of the national daily Gazeta Wyborcza ). The local magazines were confronted with other regional, professional magazines, like the Suplement as well as the national daily Rzeczpospolita and some articles of the national weekly magazines Przekrój and Polityka. 23 The investigation of the articles published in these magazines between 1989 and today allows delineating five themes the representations deal with: the socialist/ antisocialist city, the religious city, the rural/ urban society, the green city and the conflictual relationship to Kraków. All of them origin in the communist period and are subjected to the complex relationship between the represented and representation as established in that period. a. The socialist city versus the antisocialist city. The representation of Nowa Huta as a socialist city remained central for the discussion on the city after The modalities of this representation are nuanced, revealing different views not only on the city itself, but also on the concept of a socialist city : it is claimed that Nowa Huta was supposed to be a socialist city (but failed) 24, actually was such a city 25 or even still is a socialist city. 26 What is usually meant in the mass media while referring to Nowa Huta as 22 Between 1957 and 1991 the magazine was owned by the steelworks. In 1991 the magazine was privatized and currently is not subsidized, although the steelworks and the district authorities buy several pages to present their views [information from the interview with the editor-in-chief]. 23 The paper is restricted to the investigation of printed mass media and does not deal with the representation of Nowa Huta in film, most importantly in the filmed chronicles [99.40; comp ] nor in internet [00.01]. 24 Comp ; 89.21; 93.06; 99.12; 96.21; 99.23; Comp ; 97.49; 01.03; Comp ;

10 to a socialist city is the fact that the city was built following the decision of the socialist regime; that it was (or still is) the city of workers, who owe the rise of their social status, the sense of community and the experience of their youth to the socialist state 27 and thus are often nostalgic towards the past 28 and still tend to vote left. 29 The city was supposed to be a showcase of communism, where the shops were better supplied and the social infrastructure (particularly in the old districts) was better than in other cities. Another reason for calling Nowa Huta a socialist city is its architecture of socialist realism (sometimes even called socialist architecture [99.27]) which in some articles is said to have an intrinsic connection with the totalitarian system. 30 The majority of articles subscribed to what has been called the exterior discourse, present the architecture of the city as a curiosum, outdoor museum, experiment, theme park. 31 The term socialist city is also used in explanatory sense to give a shortcut explanation of the crisis of Nowa Huta [96.12]: the ruined ecology as caused by the socialist economy, the social problems and criminality as engendered by the socialist organization of life in the city, the real property conflicts which originated in the expropriations enforced by the socialist state. The multifaceted representation of Nowa Huta as a socialist city is challenged by a very strong and homogenous representation of the city as one of the most important centers of anticommunist opposition in Poland: the city of strikes, 27 The social promotion of the workers in Nowa Huta is one of the few uncontested achievements of the city, comp ; 89.21; 97.12; 98.08; 98.18; 99.12; 99.47; Comp ; 95.35; 97.12; 99.13; 00,02; 00.10; 02.25; 02.31; the nostalgia is of course not directed to the totalitarian regime, but to the social arrangements and the atmosphere in the city. However, this nostalgia is often denied, comp. 00.2; 01.9; 01.10; 01.11; In the elections of 2002 the leftist candidate, Jacek Majchrowski, got a strong support from the inhabitants of Nowa Huta. Election statistics show, however, that the inhabitants of Nowa Huta rather then left tend to vote extreme: both the far left and the far right political parties have many supporters. 30 Comp ; But the claims about the deterministic influence of the architecture on people s behavior and beliefs are also ridiculed, comp Comp ; 96.07; 97.06; 98.11; 99.23; 99.31; 00.01; 01.03; In fact a theme park called Socland which simulated the communist reality was temporary opened in Nowa Huta (on simulation in Nowa Huta comp. Stanek:2005). At the same time this peculiarity of the city is seen as a touristic asset [comp , Stenning:2001:14]. 10

11 manifestations and riots. 32 Thus, the symbol of socialism is often claimed to be transformed into the symbol of anticommunism. 33 This representation has a huge credibility, confirmed by numerous published private histories and reports on the events in 1960, the strikes in the 1980-s and the death of a young worker, Bogdan Włosik, killed by secret service agent during riots. b. The atheistic or a religious city. The initial masterplan of Nowa Huta was designed without churches: atheism was an important component of the official representation of a socialist city. 34 This intention is often stressed in the mass media after 1989; Nowa Huta is called a city without God [01.13] and an atheistic city [04.12] in which the worker was supposed to live without God [91.06]. 35 These statements are, however, mostly used as rhetorical figures introducing a dramatic contrast between the intentions of the authorities and the reality of Nowa Huta as a religious city. After the political censorship was abolished, the mass media began to explore this theme extensively. 36 The anniversaries of the 1960 defense of the cross (1990, 2000) were celebrated in the mass media by a huge number of private stories and historical analyses. At the same time, the interpretation of Nowa Huta as a religious city is in a contradiction to the widespread conviction of the crisis of social and moral values in the city and the huge criminality. 37 The image of an religious city is contested 32 Comp ; 89.07; 89.19; 89.23; 89.25; 89.26; 89.27; 89.29; 89.02; 90.13; 90.20; 90.25; 90.31; 90.35; 90.38; 91.02; 91.05; 91.06; 91.07; 91.14; 91.24; 91.27; 92.38; 92.43; 92.44; 93.06; 93.17; 95.10; 95.11; 95.13; 95.15; 96.22; 96.32; 95.33; 95.34; 95.36; 97.01; 97.05; 97.60; 98.04; 98.05; 99.07; 99.32; 99.59; 00.04; 00.13; 01.41; 02.46; 03.03; 04.12; 04.13; 33 Comp ; Not, however, for the inhabitants, who, as Stenning argues, did not see the contradiction between their religious convictions and the active construction of socialism [Stenning:2000, 105]. 35 Comp ; Comp ; 90.13; 90.20; 90.31; 90.38; 91.05; 91.06; 91.14; 92.32; 93.06; 93.17; 95.10; 95.11; 95.13; 95.15; 95.33; 95.36; 96.34; 97.01; 97.05; 98.01; 98.04; 99.07; 99.32; 00.04; 00.24; 01.04; 01.13; 01.27; 02.46; 03.3; 04.12; Comp ; 92.21; 92.23; 92.28; 92.29; 92.30; 92.34; 92.37; 92.40; 92.54; 93.16; 93.20; 93.21; 93.34; 93.35; 93.37; 94.12; 94.18; 94.20; 94.27; 94.31; 94.34; 94.40; 94.46; 95.28; 95.32; 95.34; 95.38; 95.40; 95.41; 97.47; 11

12 even by certain catholic priests, who not only claim that the conviction of a particular religiosity of their parishioners is a myth [00.05], but also return to the representation of Nowa Huta as the atheist city by stressing the disastrous impact of the atheistic, communist ideology on the lives of the inhabitants of Nowa Huta (citing the high quota of marriages between teenagers and the high number of divorces [92.52]). c. A big village and an industrial city. The strong, emotional religiosity in Poland is traditionally attributed to the countryside. This is one of the arguments (along with the supposedly tight neighborhood relationships in the city [comp ]) which support the thesis that Nowa Huta is still a big village [99.7]. 38 At the same time, the representation of Nowa Huta as an industrial city 39 and a city of workers - the losers of the political and economical transition of Poland - is widely used to explain the social problems of the city. d. The green city and the city of ecological disaster. When inhabitants of Nowa Huta are asked about the qualities of their city, the most often referred to is the greenery. Nowa Huta is sometimes called the garden city [98.10, 01.8] and the city of parks [03.08]. 40 At the same time even this feature is not left unchallenged: doubts are raised about the allegedly political or military reasons for the greenery design in Nowa Huta [97.12]. What is more, since the end of the 1990 the greenery has been present in the media as a controversial issue: tightly planted trees shade the flats and their roots ruin the 99.14; 00.17; 00.35; It should be noticed, that the police statistics provide evidence which deny the picture of a particularly dangerous place. 38 Comp. Buczyńska:1974; Wereksiej:1976; 92.32; 93.10; 97.12; 99.23; directly contested in: Comp ; 89.21; 92.5; 92.44; 97.40; Comp ; 93.10; 96.13; 95.17; 95.29; 95.35; 99.13; 99.20; 98.22; 99.23; 00.06; 00.15; 02.25; 02.28; 02.34; 03.01; 03.04;

13 underground infrastructure; thus some of the inhabitants want to remove the trees, while others defend them. 41 On the other hand, the issue of pollution which harmed both the people and the ancient monuments of Kraków was the first which was furiously addressed by the media already in the After the restructurization and modernization of the steelworks, this problem ceased to be so critical, 43 but on the local level it is far from being solved. 44 e. Kraków and Nowa Huta: antagonism or integration? The discussion held in the mass media from 1989 to 1991 in which the ecologically motivated demands for the immediate closure of the steelworks crashed with the economical raison d être of Nowa Huta renewed the old conflict between Nowa Huta and Kraków, perceived in the 1980s as united in an anticommunist alliance. The ecological issues were soon linked to the old controversies concerning the political reasons of the location of Nowa Huta nearby Kraków. 45 There is widespread tendency to depict the disastrous effect the expropriations and the foundation of the city had on the rural communities living in the area Comp ; 00.19; One of the articles describes the relationships between Kraków and Nowa Huta as a crusade [90.04], other pleas for a reconciliation between Nowa Huta and the city [91.23]; comp ; 90.15; 90.16; 91.22; Comp ; 97.45; 97.53; 98.21; 01.18; The ecologically most problematic area was until the end of the 1990-s the green zone around the factory (which was green only in the sense of being taken over by postindustrial nature - since there is a ban on investments in this area - and not as being ecologically clean); Comp ; 91.09; 92.10; 92.12; 93.05; 93.14; 93.32; 95.26; 95.42; 96.25; 96.26; 97.04; 97.09; 97.41; 98.03; 98.09; 99.13; 99.52; 01.20; 01.21; 01.24; 02.20; One of the articles claims that Kraków was punished because of its anticommunism, traditionalism and bourgeois character [93.6]; comp.: 89.12; 91.16; 95.01; 96.06; 97.18; 97.60; 99.15; 00.05; 01.25; directly opposed in: Since the end of the 1990-s the majority of articles share the opinion that the reasons were both economical and political; comp ; 98.8; 98.19; 99.44; 02.09; comp. also Salwiński op.cit. 46 Who is going to pay for Nowa Huta? is the title of one of the articles [91.16] focusing on the issue of compensation for the expropriated land; comp: 89.12; 92.09; 96.06; 13

14 After 1989, Nowa Huta came to be regarded as deprived of tradition and criminal ; one can observe a reversal of past oppositions. Once described as young city granting the second youth to Kraków the city of pensioners [Steinhauf:1970] Nowa Huta was itself named in the 1990s the city of pensioners. 47 The local mass media in Nowa Huta accuse the mass media in Kraków of distorting information about the district. 48 At the same time the opposition between Nowa Huta and Kraków is strongly contested in the media and the inherent attachment of Nowa Huta to Krakow s identity, culture, economy and politics is underscored. 49 An important tendency are the publications (formulated in the interior discourse) which underscore the rich pre-socialist history and culture of this area. 50 It can be observed, that the previously noticed replacement of the political split in the discourse (official/ subversive) by the spatial one (interior/ exterior) reveals the shift in the importance of themes: if before 1989 the opposition between Kraków and Nowa Huta was seen as an aspect of the opposition between the socialist and antisocialist city, then after the political change the latter was regarded as an aspect of the former. The above analysis reveals Nowa Huta to be a contested city. What is most characteristic for the described representations is a lack of consensus concerning the city. Almost all of the representations are confronted with opposite ones 51 and there is no unifying narrative, which would link several representations to a relatively 47 Comp ; 91.31; 91.1; 92.35; 94.30; 95.43; 96.11; 99.6; 02.22; 02.40; the transition from a young to an old city was also noticed in the press, comp Comp ; 92.33; 92.48; 92.49; 97.33; 97.53; 98.20; 98.21; 99.10; Symptomatic is here, for example, the action Aleja Nadziei [ Alley of Hope ] (2004) when the annual Festival of Kraków was inaugurated for the first time in Nowa Huta [comp , 04.08]. Another important decision was to relocate Łaźnia (an influential cultural centre) to Nowa Huta (2004). 50 Comp ; 97.2; 98.5; 89.01; 90.33; 90.37; 92.56; 93.5; 93.22; 94.14; 94.23; 94.41; 95.25; 96.1; 96.4; 97.15; 97.16; 97.18; 97.49; 97.54; 00.32; 02.3; 02.4; 02.24; 02.26; 03.6; 96.18; 97.23; 00.8; 00.11; 00.23; In the years 1998, 1999 and 2000 the weekly Głos published a series of articles on the Cistercian monastery in the village Mogiła (currently in Nowa Huta) erected in the 13 th century. 51 It is clear, however, that some of the representations are more controversial (the socialist city versus an antisocialist city, hostility or integration to Kraków) then others (the ecological situation in the city improved significantly after 1989 and most people agree that the greenery is an asset of the city). 14

15 consistent whole. The opposed narratives mobilized by both the interior and exterior discourses are referring to a sufficient number of arguments, data, experiences and emotions. 52 Since the Marxist dialectics and other metanarratives [comp. Lyotard:1984] were abandoned as argumentative methods, and the persistence of most oppositions preclude the application of the scheme of a temporal transition, 53 the narratives have substantial difficulties in dealing with the contradictions introduced by representations of Nowa Huta. This is why a popular way of addressing these contradictions is to call them paradoxes and thus to accept rhetorically the impasse; Nowa Huta becomes the town of paradoxes [89.19; 99.40, Stenning:2001,10], evoking contradictory feelings [99.15] and contradictory opinions even of professionals (architects) [02.42]. As the town of paradoxes, Nowa Huta is something uncanny: an aporia, a curiosum, a failed experiment. 54 Thus, the way Nowa Huta is represented in the media seems to contribute substantially to the above mentioned crisis, noticed by sociologist as a striking difference between the official statistics and the consciousness of the inhabitants. 55 Not only the content of the representations is at stake here, but also their structural 52 The emotions, which were attributed to the foundation myth, and which seemed to the external observer completely emptied by the official propaganda, reappeared in the mass media as valuable parts of private stories. 53 This scheme can be applied to ecological theme; to apply it to political and religious representations [comp ] is, however, much more difficult. Stenning [2001:10,1] writes on various identities of Nowa Huta that: there is no clear temporality to these identities. 54 When the expression city of paradoxes is typed into Google, it returns ca. 250 links to web pages on cities, including Vienna, Washington and Mumbai. The success of this shortcut expression clearly indicates how closely is the contemporary theorizing of urban problematic connected to the contemporary philosophical project of deconstruction of traditional (logical and dialectical) ways of dealing with contradictions. For a critical discussion on the relationship between the urban problematic and the postmodern discourse, comp. Boyer:1996 (particularly the end of chapter I); for a discussion on the artistic ways of dealing with contradictions in Nowa Huta comp. Stanek, Winskowski: A psychological study of the impact of the mass media on the consciousness of the audience would explode this paper. One should notice, however, that contemporary researchers agree, that mass media have an crucial influence on changing or consolidating of not only patterns of behavior of the audience, but also of the criteria of judgment on reality, conceptual systems and discourses which influence the experience of reality [Goban- Klas:1999, 247]. In case of Nowa Huta this thesis is confirmed by the similarity of the above presented list of mass media representations of Nowa Huta to the mental images of the city, as examined by means of the interviews with the inhabitants [comp. Gut:1993]. 15

16 features, like the untransferability to further generations of inhabitants of the crucial narratives, including the story called previously the foundation myth and the stories based on political oppositions. The foundation myth being personal, emotional and generational cannot be shared by the younger inhabitants (who often express envy of such a collective experience); also the political oppositions (mainly that between communism and anticommunism) have little identity-building value for the young generation. 56 A second reason may be found in the very role attributed to representations of Nowa Huta, presented above as the complex relationship between the presence and the project, the myth and the essence, the symbol and the symbolized. These relationships have persisted in representations of the city, but their meaning in the new political, social, economical and cultural context has radically changed. To see Nowa Huta as a project under construction leaves the rather uncanny feeling of a city whose future is an abandoned project. 57 To consider Nowa Huta as a having an essence which should be scientifically revealed posits the city as a cognitive problem rather than an environment for everyday life. 58 To see the city as a symbol suggests that the life of the people is also a representation: living in a metaphor threatens to transform life itself into a metaphor of something external to it. 59 Theorizing the city with Lefebvre s concepts demands a wide examination of the impact of these representations on practices of production of space. Thus, where most of the papers on representations of cities end, I would like to investigate the instrumental roles the mass media representations of Nowa Huta play in practices of production of space of this city. 56 Comp. Stenning:2003b for a study of changes of identity of Nowa Huta s inhabitants. 57 The author of claims that Nowa Huta is nervously waiting for somebody to say: the experiment is over, thank you for your help. 58 Nowa Huta is often claimed in the mass media to be a city particularly suitable for scientific research [03.03]; the theme of being observed and interviewed constantly returns in the statements of the inhabitants [95.43; 96.13; 00.10]. 59 That is why the inhabitants militantly protest against every attempt to transform the city or part of it into a themed socialist city [96.02; 96.07; 97.06; 98.11; 99.13; 00.02]; such ideas have been announced by historians, politicians as well as by tourist and advertising companies. The inhabitants refuse to be treated like a monkey in the zoo [00.2; comp , Stanek:2005]. 16

17 3. The instrumentalization of representations of Nowa Huta by practices of production of space. The investigation on Nowa Huta s recent history reveals a variety of roles played by the mass media representations of this city in the practices of production of space. These representations are instrumental in the decision-making processes which lead to physical transformation of space (the political representations were referred to as to arguments in the discussion on municipal credit guatantees for the steelworks 60 and on the investments in the districts 61 ). The mass media representations of Nowa Huta were applied to other practices of representing space: they were reservoirs of new street names 62 and shaped the way architectural and urbanistic themes in Nowa Huta were set. 63 They constitute an important part of the architectural context and thus influence the way spaces are used. 64 An investigation dealing with all these issues separately would explode this paper. Instead, I would like to focus on the role the representations of space play in the perceived, conceived and lived aspects of 60 The opponents to such help argued, that Nowa Huta was founded as hostile to Kraków being a revenge of Stalin [93.30, 99.57] and that its interests are profoundly divergent to these of Kraków [comp. in particular the official Statement of the Council of the 7 th District in Kraków from in: 93.44]. This proved to be a successful argument: the first decision on the financial guarantees for the steelwork was negative [91.22; 91.30]. The leaders of the community of Nowa Huta opposed this representation with the image of an anticommunist city which resisted the communist indoctrination [92.43, comp , 92.48]. For an analysis of the ways of dealing with representations in the postcommunist politics, comp. Staniszkis: Comp. 99.1, 99.58, 91.8; 92.31, 99.55; The old names referring to communist heroes, institutions and events were exchanged by names connected to the anticommunist history, or to these parts of Polish history which were banned during the communist regime [comp ; 90.36; 94.45; 04.21; comp. also Stenning 2000, 107nn]. Another source of names was the presocialist history of this area [comp ; 90.45, 90.46, 90.49, 97.39]. 63 The representation of Nowa Huta as a city which expressed the socialist ideology [Kozłowski:2002, 23] was fundamental for the 2002 Kraków IX International Biennale of Architecture, held under the slogan: Less Ideology - More Geometry. The introductory text claimed that: the city was built as the entity uniting ideology and geometry. The ideology has passed away whereas the geometry has not been completed [Ibid:5]. These claims established the conceptual framework for the majority of the designs submitted to the competition. 64 The representations of space clearly constituted an important part of the architectural context both for public buildings (first at all the churches, like the Arka Pana The Ark of the Lord ) and residential complexes (like the postmodern residential complex Na Skarpie which was claimed by the designer to be a protest against the architecture of socialist realism [94.10]). 17

18 one iconic site in Nowa Huta. This site a broadening in the Aleja Róż (or Alley of Roses) where before 1989 the Lenin monument was standing is clearly a representational space in Lefebvre s sense and his concept of representational spaces will be very useful for the analysis. In The Production of Space, Lefebvre provides the following description of representational spaces: Representational spaces: space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of «inhabitants» and «users», but also of some artists, [ ] writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe. [ps:39; pe:49]. 65 In the analysis of the site in Alley of Roses two issues will be of particular importance: - Lefebvre writes, that representations of space coexist, concord or interfere with representational spaces [ps:41]. The examination of the chosen site in Alley of Roses will aim at finding out more about this relationship. It will be argued, that the representational spaces, about which Lefebvre writes that they are lived through [ ] images and symbols are also lived through representations of space Lefebvre describes representational spaces as spaces of «inhabitants» and «users» ; by putting these words in quotation marks, Lefebvre demonstrates his distance to the functionalist discourse and in particular to the functionalist concept of use. The examination of the site in Nowa Huta will reveal the shortcomings of this concept which can be overcome by Lefebvre ian concept of 65 The French original avoids the controversial description of representational spaces as lived directly yet though something else (i.e. in a mediated way): Les espaces de représentation, c est-à-dire l espace vécu à travers les images et symboles qui l accompagnent [ ]" [pe:49]. 66 One should be careful in distinguishing symbols and images from representations in Lefebvre s writings. Lefebvre introduces two main meanings of the concept of "representation": a wide and a narrow one. The latter (according to which representations are conventional, institutionalized conceptualization) is particularly distinguished from symbols [kda 3:120nn], which are connected to nature and human rudimental needs thus not being neither arbitrary nor conventional. On the other hand, Lefebvre s most impressive analyses of representational spaces (the analyses of housing [ps:232nn], leisure spaces [ps:309nn] and monuments [ps:220nn]) deal precisely with the issue of influence of representations of space on representational spaces. These analyses show, that representations of space may simulate symbols; the issue of nature is here of particular importance. 18

19 use. An important feature of this alternative concept is that it allows registering the impact of representations of space on the use of urban spaces. The site I would like to focus on is left without an official name, but it is currently called colloquially the square after Lenin. It is a broadening in the Alley of Roses: a pathway which connects the Plac Centralny (Central Square) with the Plac Ratuszowy (City Hall Square). It is important to notice, that this site was not designed as an urban square and according to typological criteria it is not a square. The buildings surrounding the site are exclusively blocks of flats; the only entrances accessible from the site lead to the staircases of the blocks of flats. Following the original masterplan, in front of them a rose garden was created. A photograph published in the year 1959 [Ptaszycki:1959] shows the newly realized design. The arrangement is symmetrical with the main axis of the ensemble, but the leading of paths and the placement of seats stresses the direction perpendicular to the axis. These transversal paths aimed at the entrances to the houses making the rose garden easily accessible by the inhabitants. Thus, the rose garden was designed to be a calm spot between two official spaces: the Central Square (foreseen as closed by an unrealized theatre) and, on the other side, the City Hall Square (designed as closed by the either unbuilt city hall). Since the authorities missed a symbolic place suitable for political celebrations in the city, in the year 1973 the site was redecorated and the monument of Lenin has been built on the axis of the whole ensemble. 67 The roses were removed and the whole square covered with stone plates. The pace of the site changed radically: the slow pace of the rose garden was replaced by the supervised emptiness (a police box was built nearby) interrupted by official mass manifestations and by violent anticommunist riots. By removing the transversal paths and placing the monument on the axis, the site was given a clearly axial direction. Since the theatre and the city hall were unbuilt, this site was the only place in the centre of the city which was finished and urbanistically defined. 67 A design chosen was by a competition, won by Marian Konieczny [comp. Miezian:2004, 85nn]. 19

20 The monument was attacked several times and once even with a bomb which knocked off one foot of the leader of the October revolution. Shortly after the first non-communist government was formed (1989), the monument was assaulted with paint by mostly young people, who demanded its removal. Under this pressure, the municipal authorities reluctantly 68 decided to remove the monument and sell it to the highest bidder (it was sold to a theme park in Sweden). The Lenin monument, however, dominated the popular imagination about Nowa Huta; a poet and musician Marcin Święcicki wrote in 1997: when I think about Nowa Huta I see the monument of Lenin, although it is no longer there [97.12]. With the removal of the monument, the site was deprived of an element which branded it; thus for the first time it needed a name and was called colloquially the square after Lenin, or the emptiness after Lenin. This name not only shows the branding power of the monument, but also, what is more interesting, the fact that the site was accepted as a square in spite of the lack of commercial, cultural or administrative functions which could generate urban activity. 69 The inhabitants and the local press called for a redecoration of this site [96.13]. The discussion was clearly influenced by the representations of space, mainly those of antagonism between Kraków and Nowa Huta, which were used as arguments. 70 Following the claims, a new design was provided and realized in the year The inner part of the square was sunk for three steps. The immersion was flanked by two rows of stone socles. Inside the immersion, in the place where the Lenin monument was standing, an elevated flower-bed for roses was built, continuing to preserve this geometrically privileged spot as inaccessible for people. Opposite to the 68 It is a historical irony that the former leaders of the anticommunist opposition defended the Lenin monument, trying to avoid one more irritation of the Russian authorities whose troops were still deployed in Poland [89.05]. 69 For a period of time at least one of the staircases in the adjacent blocks of flats was used as a temporary shop. 70 The context of this demand was a broader discussion in the late 1990s in Nowa Huta. The local press registered the rapid degradation of the district [comp ; 99.56; 99.58; 01.38; 02.6; 02.23; 02.33; 02.34; 03.3; 03.16; 03.17; 04.12] to which contributed the policy of uneven investments in the city (according to an article from 1999 [99.1] the district provides 35% of the municipal income while the city invests only 10% of the available money in the district). Thus, the feeling of being discriminated is widely present in the local press [comp ; 97.46; 99.14; 99.57; 00.35] and the discussion was dominated by the old antagonism between Nowa Huta and Kraków [comp. 99.1, 99.58, 91.8; 92.31, 99.55; 00.18]. 71 The designers was a Kraków-based office Aarcada. 20